Illustrating the landingpad.org Helicopter

We recently launched Landing Pad, a site featuring the
best and most beautifully designed iPad apps. We wanted the logo to be special
and memorable - something beyond a type mark. A helicopter played off the idea
of the landing pad and we quickly settled on “the one from M*A*S*H”.

I found some reference material and started sketching. The sketching phase was
particularly important for this illustration because I needed to simplify the
helicopter in every aspect. The Bell 47G
is a utilitarian helicopter and there are many exposed pieces so drawing it in
charcoal helped to not get obsessed with the minute details.

I photographed the sketch, cleaned it up a bit, and loaded it in to Adobe
Illustrator. I turned the sketch blue because animators sketch in blue pencils
and I think it’s badass. It also helps differentiate your new lines from the
sketch.

I made new vector lines using the pen tool, with a black outline and no fill
color. A valuable lesson I learned is that I should have drawn full shapes with
no open ended lines — doing this comes in handy later during the color phase,
since you could easily select entire shapes and objects, not simply the negative
space created by the outlines.

Ahh, nice clean vectors. A professor once told me, “Illustrator can magnify to
6400%, so do it!”. Zoom in and make sure your shapes are drawn well and your
curves aren’t wonky.

I did all of the color in Photoshop simply because I prefer it, but you can
color just as well in Illustrator. I kept the vector drawing as a smart layer at
the top of my document and switched it on and off to help keep on track but I
did stray from it when I saw room for improvement.

I shaded over the flat color by painting in a layer with the airbrush using a
darker, more intense version of the base yellow, and blended it using the
multiply option. For highlights I used a bright, light yellow and blended it
using the color dodge option. Never shade using black and white - it will
appear dull, flat and monochromatic.

Details are important - even if they can’t be seen when the final image is
scaled down for viewing on the web it will add to the complex gestalt and yield
a more sophisticated outcome.

Getting to this point took around 30 hours of work. It’s tedious, but for the
sake of the final version it’s worth not cutting any corners. Even the simplest
objects had about 5 layers devoted to shading - two or three for the shadows and
usually two for a nice, rich highlight.

The helicopter’s reflection in the iPad’s glass was an important element that
ties the illustration together. On a matte surface a cast shadow would have
worked in the same way to ground the object and give it a sense of resting on a
surface. To view a higher resolution version of the final illustration click
here.

I wanted the illustration to be the dominant element in the logo, but not
completely overpowering. The strong white text helps to balance the type and
image together, and putting it on a black background provides nice contrast.

As for Landing Pad itself, we’re looking forward to the
official launch of the iPad when we can get our hands on some apps and showcase
them on the site. If you are working on an app and want to show off your design
feel free to email us at design@thoughtbot.com
or submit it directly.